Re: Breaking RSA & Securing RSA

From: Regis (nobody_at_thisaddress.com)
Date: 07/22/05 

Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 18:55:59 -0400

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 22:12:28 GMT, "Joseph Ashwood" <ashwood@msn.com>
wrote:

>Actually I tend to agree with Colin on this one. Because one of the NSAs
>(and GCHQ, and other such groups throughout the world) primary mandates is
>to collect information that is nominally protected to improve the
>information collection of the associated country having a system dedicated
>to breaking 1024-bit RSA seems like a reasonable expenditure. It is unlikely
>that such a device will be brought to bear on an average individual, but
>considering the wide spread usage of 1024-bit RSA keys I would expect that
>there is actually a reasonable amount of traffic from various governments
>protected by such keys (although most have probably gone on to 2048-bit by
>now). This would indicate that the expenditure on a system capable of
>factoring 1024-bit numbers could be considered reasonable. If I'm wrong,
>it's still better to assume that your attackers are more capable than they
>really are.
> Joe

I understand what you're saying, but you guys always fail to remember
one very important detail -- the NSA does not have a monopoly on the
world's leading mathematicians. There are plenty of mathematicians
all over the world who don't work for the NSA, and if those
mathematicians haven't stumbled upon any new breakthroughs in
factoring massively large numbers, why would you believe that the few
working at the NSA already have?

If such a breakthrough were to occur at some point, it would
undoubtedly come from the 99.99% of the world's mathematicians that
don't work for the NSA, as opposed to the 0.01% that do.

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